Help employees take ownership of their development
Photo by CoWomen on Unsplash
With the changes going on in the world today, helping employees take ownership of their development has never been more important.
Changes are happening too fast to develop everyone’s skills via “push” — you need them to “pull”
Competition for skilled employees has never been higher — people want to work in a job that provides development/career development opportunities
Risks associated with skill gaps, and the costs of those risks are high — if you don’t know what skill gaps you have, how big they are, and where they are, you can’t fix them — let employees help you do this
The following are answers to frequently asked questions about how to engage employees in taking control of their learning so they can upskill/reskill.
Simple hacks to enable employees to be in charge of their learning from day 1
Imagine if you provided someone with the ability to self-assess against the competency model behaviors for their new job on the first day of work. They would know the organization’s specific expectations of them, what skill gaps they have, and with a competency development tool that provided personalized learning, they would be able to create their first targeted professional development plan on day one. Plus, they would help their new manager know exactly how to help them.
In a tight labor market, with extended job vacancies, where you likely must hire someone who still needs to be upskilled or reskilled, this has never been more essential.
A role-based competency model is a roadmap for success in that job. Give them a playbook on day 1 they can immediately begin to execute.
How to get employees engaged in their development in the best interest of the company
A role-based competency model identifies what someone in a role needs to do to achieve their part of organizational strategy. So if you follow this approach, development and self-directed learning will be perfectly aligned with organizational goals. (Upskilling)
And this works for career planning too. You want to encourage people to prepare for other roles they may desire. When assessing against other role-based competency models, and pursuing related development opportunities, those too will be aligned to support organizational objectives. (Reskilling)
How to train leaders and managers to allow employees to take charge of their development
You must start by providing them with “what’s in it for me”. They have to understand how much more efficient they can be, how much better their decisions can be, and how much more likely they will be to meet their objectives. They need to understand that skills analytics can drive accurate commitments to the market and their customers. So it’s a win-win that you need to make obvious.
We provide our customers with toolkits that are designed to help them communicate these messages and operationalize continuous learning. Give managers and leaders specific examples of how it will help them and what might need to change. For example, provide a “this is what it looks like today when you do X”, “this is what it will look like in the future”, so it’s not so scary. Give them tools and templates that make it easy for them to learn a new routine. Give them messaging they can use with their teams and guidelines on when/where to use it.
Success brings more success. As leaders and managers find themselves being more effective, because they will have more information available to them to make the right decisions, and people are more skilled requiring more strategic (and less tactical) coaching, they will continue to promote employees taking charge of their development. Identify those champions and use their stories to bring others along.
We hope these help you engage employees in taking ownership of their learning.
For more on how to activate this methodology, see the graphic and click to download and share the elevator pitch and business case for how and why to upskill/reskill in your organization.